Memeorandum

December 15, 2016

Designer Drugs

Drug 85 Times as Potent as Marijuana Caused a ‘Zombielike’ State in Brooklyn

By Marc Santora Dec 15, 2016

When emergency medical technicians were called to a mass casualty event in Brooklyn last summer, dispatchers used a word more associated with apocalyptic Hollywood movies than medical emergencies: zombies.

Emergency workers reported multiple people at the scene, near a subway station on Myrtle Avenue and Broadway, on the border of Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant, “all of whom had a degree of altered mental status that was described by bystanders as ‘zombielike,’” according to a study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

In fact, they had overdosed on a designer drug — one that would raise alarms both in the medical community and drug enforcement circles and could, possibly, be a precursor of more potent and dangerous drugs still to come.

The gist - designer drug labs, often based in China, piggy-back off of legitimate drug research.

The report, based on blood and urine samples drawn from eight of the 18 men taken to area hospitals that day, offers the first detailed look at a powerful drug that has caused dozens of people to overdose. It identifies the drug as a synthetic cannabinoid called AMB-FUBINACA that was originally developed by the pharmaceutical company Pfizer.

...

These chemical compounds, often created in labs in China based on research conducted at western universities and pharmaceutical companies, are not regulated when they appear on the market and are hard to detect.

“And if you are someone who is regularly drug tested, it will not show up,” adding to the drugs’ appeal, Mr. Gerona said.

He traced the history of synthetic drugs back to Clemson University and a researcher, John W. Huffman, who was looking for ways to create a drug in the lab that could enhance the medicinal aspects of THC while eliminating the psychotropic effects.

In the course of his work, Mr. Huffman synthesized more than 300 compounds, and his work was published in academic literature.

Not long after, in about 2008, a synthetic compound began appearing on the street, called K2 in America and Spice in Europe. The main chemical agent, known as JWH-18, was named after the Clemson researcher.

Soon JWH-18 was showing up around the country and was eventually scheduled as a Class 1 narcotic.

The drug makers would have to evolve to stay one step ahead of law enforcement.

In the case of the drug in the Brooklyn outbreak, Pfizer established a patent for a synthetic cannabinoid it called AB-FUBINACA in 2009. The drug seems to have been abandoned by the company and was never tested on humans.

But the patent is public, and Mr. Gerona said that drug labs in China and other foreign nations scour patents for information that can be useful in creating the next generation of drugs.

These drugs move straight from the lab to the street, so the first trials of their effects are conducted on buyers.

Troubling - publishing research and getting patents are somewhat basic to moving science forward. And there are certainly reasons to hope that cannabinoids have useful medicinal properties.

Of course, synthetic opioids are also coming out of labs:

And if the dangers of synthetic cannabinoids have researchers concerned, the risks of designer opioids are perhaps even greater.

Just last month, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration issued an alert for a new designer drug called Pink, which had been responsible for 46 deaths, including 31 in New York and 10 in North Carolina.

“Pink belongs to a family of deadly synthetic opioids far more potent than morphine,” according to the agency. “It is usually imported to the United States, mainly from illicit labs in China.”

Mr. Gerona said that while it is not in the interest of dealers to kill their clients, as these synthetic compounds become increasingly potent, the risks will continue to grow.

When heroin starts looking like the safe, prudent product our War on Drugs has reached a sorry state.

I guess idiot Martin Sheen thinks that because he played a President on tv, on a show that only leftists watched because it was pretty much about Slick minus being a sexual predator, that gives him a soap box from which to lecture the electoral college. Maybe he should reflect on what a terrible father he was to raise such an asshole of a son and STFU.

To carry on from the other thread, my first job was to clean out the saw dust and blocks and other debris from houses my dad built. I got paid 15 cents an hour and he took out the cost of lunch. It is no wonder I looked for a lucrative profession.

Later I graduated to painting parking lot lines in shopping centers at the crack of dawn when no one was there. Again manual labor taught me I liked making a living through thinking. It also taught me there was no chore I was too good to do when called for.

I was a lifeguard at a local pool. Boring, with lots of clean this, that and the other thing. The got lucky with a job at the Chrysler plant on the line. Big pay, stupid work. College looked attractive all of a sudden.

Regarding the technology meeting yesterday, the question was why were all 3 of the Trump children in the room.

Commenter on Treehouse says she thinks those 3 have been trained to watch body language and other unspoken cues. She also pointed out that in photos of the meeting all 3 are looking in different directions. HA!

But, but, but...Trump is a moron! A Cheeto-headed imbecile! He has no strategy! He has no plans! He's ignorant and uneducated and dumb! He could never come up with any kind of smart approach for his meetings!

It must be true, because I keep reading it in all the newspapers and hearing it on CNN and the network news.

JamesD, I especially enjoyed Bezos and Page looking uncomfortable in their corner (as put on Drudge). Note that all the tech execs were placed in corners, not centered at sides or the ends of the table.

But, but, but...Trump is a moron! A Cheeto-headed imbecile! He has no strategy! He has no plans! He's ignorant and uneducated and dumb! He could never come up with any kind of smart approach for his meetings!

Stole the words right outta my mouth JamesD. Lot of people getting punked by the idiot.

I noticed when trump took melania to the meetings on capitol hill she seemed to be the one watching the people so she could pass on what she noticed. I think trump likes to have people he can thoroughly trust watching the people when they are known snakes trying to pretend to suck up to him.

Thanks for the encouraging Wretchard link on the previous thread. Conservatives' preference for individualism and independence has often seemed a terminal disadvantage when confronting the lockstepping leftist horde. They are so efficient at delivering talking points and converging on targets. Ironic, isn't it that the left always frets over authoritarianism on the right? Things have to get really bad before rightwing loners will actually get together and come up with a plan. Staying together ex post facto is even rarer. Wretchard's metaphor is a welcome reminder that that can also be a strength:

Programmers know the rationale for loose coupling "an approach to interconnecting the components in a system ... so that those components ... depend on each other to the least extent practicable" is adaptability. It can absorb change because elements are isolated from changes to some other element. Each node has enough individual autonomy to operate on its own even with the network down.

Wretchard notes that "this architecture resembles the federal system," but it reminded me of what Michael Yon, I believe, wrote about the US Military from Iraq. He observed that one of the unique advantages of how US troops were schooled and deployed, was that even in a unit as small as a tank crew, the leader of that unit was trained and empowered to make judgment calls and take autonomous action, if necessary, rather than being expected to wait for orders from above in unexpected circumstances. That's one reason I'm glad to see a boots-on-the-ground general, not a career bureaucrat, as Secretary of Defense, someone who seems likely to ask what happens, and how do we operate, when all the sophisticated, interconnected, tech systems go down?

Wretchard gives Putin a bit too much credit for jamming the system in this case — I believe his role has been wildly overblown by the Democrats themselves — but I can see how the Beastie Boy sabotage scenario was too delicious to resist.

My fist job was babysitting for neighborhood families, then I worked at McD's until I got food poisoning from bad Big Mac sauce (along with many customers), then I went to work for a lumber/hardware company. I saved enough working there to want to invest in gold which had just gone back on the market, and my dad wouldn't let me. When it hit $900 an ounce I rubbed it in his nose; because, I ended up spending the $1200 I had saved on clothes and partying. I still remind him of that to this day.

I also worked at a movie theater when Star Wars came out and also when Grease came out. Star Wars was showing on both screens starting at 10 am and the last showing was a 2 am start... and we had lines 24 hours a day. And lots of weirdos in costume and on their nth time to see it. We had to dress in costume for Grease, so I made a lovely poodle skirt and wore bobby socks and saddle shoes. I can still recite both movies word for word... :(

Fauxcahontas, aka Chief Cool Arrow, will get her head handed to her in a Trump administration.

She's insinuated herself onto that committee to protect the castrating sequestration cuts over the next eight years amounting to a half billion when the "Budget Control Act of 2011" kicks into high gear.

20 blue chip defense contracting companies, including one of the largest anywhere in the world- Raytheon, in Cool Arrow's home state.

Cool Arrow is the Senate's version of commie alpha hotel Rep Barbara Lee, the one woman wrecking ball of the SFO Bay Area's defense-based economic sector.

>>>Clinton’s campaign did have a real news problem, but the problem was with the real news coverage — coverage that dwelled overwhelmingly on a bullshit email server scandal, devoted far fewer resources to investigating Trump’s shady foundation than Clinton’s lifesaving one, largely ignored Trump’s financial conflicts of interest, and almost entirely avoided discussion of the policy stakes in the campaign.<<<

My first job was stringing a two mile barbed-wire fence in CA's Palomares Canyon. 8 strands high, six by six inch 8 footer posts every 40 feet. Dry poured. Lotta holes. Metal T posts driven into ground by hand every 10 feet. Took two months.

Had to clear 20 foot swath through scrub oak, manazanita and snakes. The winner got crucified.

Caught a bad case of poison oak second day. First stop every morning was the 7-11 to pick up a couple bottles of rubbing alcohol to pour on my shirt once the sweatin started. Learned how to drive a stick shift. A Willys on hills. Super clutch. A simpler time indeed. Summer of 1971.

He observed that one of the unique advantages of how US troops were schooled and deployed, was that even in a unit as small as a tank crew, the leader of that unit was trained and empowered to make judgment calls and take autonomous action, if necessary, rather than being expected to wait for orders from above in unexpected circumstances.

Looking beyond popular explanations such as geography or superior technology, Hanson argues that it is in fact Western culture and values–the tradition of dissent, the value placed on inventiveness and adaptation, the concept of citizenship–which have consistently produced superior arms and soldiers. Offering riveting battle narratives and a balanced perspective that avoids simple triumphalism, Carnage and Culture demonstrates how armies cannot be separated from the cultures that produce them and explains why an army produced by a free culture will always have the advantage. [emphasis added]

I never really considered ancient Athens to be an examplar of free society, but VDH makes a compelling case, and in any event it's a fun read (though the first 200pp at least).

He observed that one of the unique advantages of how US troops were schooled and deployed, was that even in a unit as small as a tank crew, the leader of that unit was trained and empowered to make judgment calls and take autonomous action, if necessary, rather than being expected to wait for orders from above in unexpected circumstances.

Looking beyond popular explanations such as geography or superior technology, Hanson argues that it is in fact Western culture and values–the tradition of dissent, the value placed on inventiveness and adaptation, the concept of citizenship–which have consistently produced superior arms and soldiers. Offering riveting battle narratives and a balanced perspective that avoids simple triumphalism, Carnage and Culture demonstrates how armies cannot be separated from the cultures that produce them and explains why an army produced by a free culture will always have the advantage. [emphasis added]

I never really considered ancient Athens to be an examplar of free society, but VDH makes a compelling case, and in any event it's a fun read (though the first 200pp at least).

No one will be surprised that mine was a 100 paper route at age 12 when I had no clue about accounting and to whom to deliver.

That was followed at 16 by working summers in each department, starting with wiping down presses from underneath after each run.

Then into the hot metal composing room, reading Linotype galleys upside down and backwards, laying out the galleys in chases, setting headlines on the Ludlow machines. Then into the newsroom/photo. Never sold advertising as a teen.

I have some searching criticism of the piece but not sure where I would start. One I think is the assumption that Putin is somewhere in the background and the other is stretching the programming analogy too far.

>>>The swarm will continue to decline until it tunes into a new frequency. That's not to say that Putin didn't help the collapse along by jamming the Talking Points signal to some degree with his disinformation campaigns.<<<

I would argue that most industrialized countries in the world, including Russia, used official and unofficial means to get an understanding of the campaigns and the election.

My parents wouldn't let me get a paper route but three of my neighborhood buddies had their own. We'd meet up and fold after school. Whoever was the most "burned out on it" got my help. Sunday mornings before Mass we'd have to do the big editions. Saturday night we'd get all the inserts ready. I'd make a few bucks. Didn't see it as a job. I was "making money."

My first job was growing up in the country with cattle, chickens and two vegetable gardens big enough to stock a battalion of Hoss Cartwrights.

Cutting firewood, building fences, repairing fences, feeding chickens, feeding cows, hauling cow turds to the garden, cutting hay, hauling hay, watering the gardens, weeding them, picking the veggies, keeping ditches and pipelines running and about a hundred other things.
Pay? Allowance of, IIRC, two bucks a month and I think I had to go on strike to get that!
Looking back it was mostly a lot of fun and I was very lucky to have had that life.

Or more generally, Wrechard is buying into the Russians were behind all the hacking of the DNC and the Hillary campaign. Yikes, the Obama administration must have been tougher on the Russians than anyone knew.

I think they would have been surprised to the point of incredulity that a high ranking administration official would have a poorly secured private server where she conducted her official business. That they would exploit it is unsurprising.

And I am glad YOU brought it up, because I think I have figured something out.

Part of the jarring appearance of the Snowflake Brigade whining and rioting and what-not is this:

They are looking remarkably like the more vocal members of OUR generation, the ones who staged sit-ins and testified before Congress about Genghis Khan and burned flags and such.

These are clones of those people and are OUT OF THEIR GENERATIONAL PLACE. That is why they are so jarring. Lefty universities have created throwback types and loosed them in the wrong time frame. The REAL character of the Millenials should be more akin to the Greatest Generation, because that is the generational slot they should fill. This would be like my grandson, whom daddy has met, and who is all about being responsible, making himself successful, and (of course) voted for Trump.

So I offer this as a theory as to why we find these sobbing snowflakes so disturbing. They are out of sequence, pure and simple.

Never really thought about it before, but growing up on ranches in MT, I don't think I got paid for hourly work until I had a janitor job in early college. The summers were working for my oldest BIL for room and board. Seemed perfectly normal. Twisting wrenches since six, self taught at rebuilding Jeeps and tractors by 12, racing across hay fields in a WW II 4x4 truck heavily modified as a hay stacker and hauling horses in stock trucks by 14. Perfect grounding for a future inguneer. Of course, moving next door to a speed shop in Phoenix at 15 cemented any hesitations.

I'll be interested to know if you are convinced, assuming you make it all the way through the next couple of hundred pages. Would we have prevailed militarily in WWII if we hadn't broken the German codebooks? It certainly seems to me that totalitarian armies have been pretty damn successful too, and that it wouldn't be hard to find "nine landmark battles" upon which to argue that case, especially if we're ranging over the whole of ancient to modern history.

I think we would have prevailed eventually because the Germans were running out of fuel.

At least that's what I have read (am not a military historical expert).

When my dad joined the Army in 1937 (due to having to drop out of IU after all of his possessions were stolen from his boarding house, including his pre-med textbooks and his coat) he was sent to Ft. Snelling, Minnesota. He was paid in silver dollars, Ft. Snelling still had a wood stockade and a lot of horses. THAT is how far behind we were when the Japanese bombed Pearl harbor.

However, we went from Pearl Harbor to V-J day in 3 1/2 years, which is pretty amazing. We were only able to do it by refitting Detroit's auto plants and converting almost everything else in America to the war effort.

Unlike the Nazis, we did that without slave labor. Free peoples can do that. Totalitarian regimes are handicapped by their need to keep their own population in line, as well as those they have conquered.

"not authorized"... 'tactical reliance on technicality' was what one of my first bosses in bureaucracy would call it.

Used it after finding out how the opposition would respond. I'd been given the charge of "obtaining information" with full discretion as to how. Opposition would get a rash when my detailed requests landed on their desk (their reply was always "nope." under a thinly veiled 'who the f*ck are you?')

Boss would set up lunch. Egos got stroked. The "do this the easy way or the hard way" talk got had. Boxes of info were in my office the next day.

Homage. Tribute. Threats. The king won't send high ranking messengers first. Try to get em to lay down first to assess resistance and what it's going to cost

"He was paid in silver dollars, Ft. Snelling still had a wood stockade and a lot of horses. THAT is how far behind we were when the Japanese bombed Pearl harbor."

Wow, I didn't realize we were that far behind starting out.

"However, we went from Pearl Harbor to V-J day in 3 1/2 years, which is pretty amazing."

Fortunately we had two huge oceans which pretty much insulated us from full scale attacks and which gave us the time to do it, though. Of course, those same oceans are what forced us to develop the means of projecting force over long distances — which has stood us well globally ever since.

MM--- I think you've nailed it. Their numbers aren't what they're cracking them up to be. And with the fiscal austerity I see coming, a lot of snowflakes are in for a serious reconditioning experience. Going hungry is "hard and scary."

"They are looking remarkably like the more vocal members of OUR generation, the ones who staged sit-ins and testified before Congress about Genghis Khan and burned flags and such."

What's especially jarring to me, is that the only really look like their historical predecessors. Back in the 60's at least the students were protesting policies that had humongous real world life and death consequences -- with friends and family (and selves) being drafted and sent to a (controversial) battlefront. Ditto for the systemic racism being addressed by the Civil Rights protests. The protesters also faced serious real world consequences, from water canons, dogs, tear gas to arrest.

What gets to me is when these snowflake SJW's style themselves as courageous latter day civil rights liberators, when so often what they are demanding is special privileges and what they are facing is zero consequences.

Would we have prevailed militarily in WWII if we hadn't broken the German codebooks?

VDH would've considered that West v West (or free v free) and not a cultural test. In fact, in that WWII video he did a couple months back (it's on the same youtube page as the election video), he cites that as one of the main reasons WWII had such an appalling body count.